Anyone tried a Katz Eye or similar focusing screen?

[Groucho]

Well, I probably won't get outside to play with it much today - it's been windy enough to nearly blow the house over, rainy, and it's currently 34' with a high of 41' today. Brrr! But, I did get some original pictures of it done, so here they are.

It comes packaged in a little plastic container, you also get a nice little tool for grabbing onto the focusing screen when installing or removing it.

Here's what the new screen looks like.

I did a couple identical photos through the viewfinder to see if the brightness would notably change. Both photos were taken with the same settings so that you could tell if it was dimmer or brighter than the stock screen. I see little if any difference. Here's the stock screen, you can see the brackets scribed onto the glass. Forgive the slightly blurriness, it's tough to get a good shot of a viewfinder!

...and here's the Katz Eye screen. You can see the split image and microprisms doing their thing.

Here's a closer shot of the focusing aids. In this shot, it's focused on the front of the Zeiss lens mounted on the SLR.

Here it is with the focusing closer on the lens. This is one where the split image is not very helpful, but you can see the microprisms showing a big difference as you move from the in-focus area (the "135" on the front of the lens) to the areas not in focus, like farther down the lens and onto the SLR body.

Here it is focusing on the lug ring on the SLR, so the foreground is now showing distortion in the microprism area.

BTW, the Spotmatic in the photos was a gift from gokenin, who found himself with an extra one and knew that I was interested in picking one up. Thanks buddy! It's a beauty.

 

[jann1033]

thanks for the report groucho....we had our one day of spring and are back to winter ( or is that win-dier) as well. someday i will get out to take some new photographs but right now 31 feels about like 10 to me

 

[WVDisGeek]

Nice Pics Groucho!

It looks to my eyes that there isn't any significant brightness difference with the new screen and with the original. This was one of my fears of installing the Katz-eye. Have you noticed any auto focus changes, or have you just been playing in manual focus mode?

The microprisims look very similar to my A3000 focus screen. I difinitely think this would help with the manual focus issues I am having, especially in low light and macro situations.

I really appreciate you sharing your adventures with this screen. As I get closer to purchasing one for my K200D, I may PM you, if you don't mind, to ask some more detailed questions.

Thanks again for sharing!

 

[Groucho]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I finally used it a little today in a "real world" situation (birthday party - third one in three weeks, I'm getting tired of birthday cake! ) and I am definitely more pleased with it now. My initial impressions were a little shaky, partly due to it being slightly "off" and partly due to trying to use it in very difficult conditions: First, I had a brand new F1.2 lens, which means that if you are even the tiniest bit off-focus, you might as well be off by a mile, plus I was doing indoor shots of my son's constantly moving face filling most of the frame, which means that there's virtually no contrast to use for grabbing focus.

Under slightly more realistic conditions, even with moving kids and indoors, it was definitely easier to grab focus. You can probably determine focus almost as well with the regular screen, but the Katz Eye lets you be faster and more confident in your focusing, as the microprisms "snap" in and out of focus. I found it pretty easy to quickly get solid focus with a 28mm F2.8 lens, for example.